Originally posted by dojoboy
I agree; however, what advance came about through peaceful leadership? I think there is an arguement in favor of most human advances resulting from conflict or the threat of conflict. Not that there aren't any resulting from pure desire to help all mankind (e.g. Cure for Cancer), just not many.
Well, so it's a tricky question you posed dojoboy -- I've been pondering it. Now, as far as technological advances/"Wonders" which have come about through non-military means, I actually think that there are a lot. Just looking at the Wonders list in Civ3: Magellans Voyage, Theory of Evolution, Copernicus' Observatory, Sistine Chapel, Hoover Dam, Univ Suffrage, Newton's, SETI, etc.
But the harder question, I realized, is "How many 'Great Leaders' of a society have either arisen through non-military means, or are chiefly remembered for non-military acts.'" Now, I don't think that "non-military" necessarily means "non-competitive," it just means that, say, they fight their battles economically or culturally, rather than militarily.
I also realized that it's very hard to think of 20th century GLs who are not associated with military action, what with the two World Wars dominating the century. But still, I came up with two.
For starters, using a historical figure, how about Thomas Jefferson? He's one of the few Founding Fathers that at least *I* don't really associate directly with the Revolutionary War (i.e. as a commander of armies; although he is VERY directly associated with causing it, as the person whom everyone thinks of as penning the Declaration of Independance.) But I think that after Washington (whose status as Commander of the Continental Armies eliminates him from the list of non-military leaders) Jefferson is probably the next "Great Leader" of the early USA most people think of, and he's mostly remembered for scholarly, cultural, and commerical things like writing the Dec of Indep, designing the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (along with his own house of Monticello), and arranging the purchase of the Louisiana Territoy from France which more than doubled the land area of the nascent USA.
Or, to jump forward two centuries, how about John F Kennedy? While yes, military actions can be associated with his name (Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis) I don't think that they actually relate to "What Made Him Great" (and the Cuban Missile Crisis is arguably more of a
diplomatic standoff, with potential military consequences.) I think we remember him for the youthful energy he brought to the presidency, and such "wonders" as the Apollo Space Program, which it seems to me is a very real example of a GL walking into a city and rushing a project! (Sadly, what we probably remember JFK for the most is being assassinated, but that's another subject. Martyrdom has always been a very efficient way of creating GLs, at least posthumously...)
And thirdly and finally, and because I feel stupid for fixating on American leaders, let's go to Asia, to the city-state of Singapore and its senior minister Lee Kuan Yew. In the mid 1960s Singapore was ousted from its post-WW2/post-colonial confederacy with Malaysia and left to fend for itself. This is an island nation a little larger than Manhattan, with no natural resources -- not even fresh water. But in the space of 30 years, Lee and his admittedly autocratic government took Singapore from a resourceless third-world nation to a prosperous, commercially powerful (Singapore and Rotterdam usually vie for status as "Busiest Port in the World") first-world country -- the only first-world country in Southeast Asia. Lee's legacy is all about economics and social engineering, with nary a military scuffle to be found.
Ok, I really went on longer than I meant to, but it got into my head and I just kept thinking about it. Anyone else have any ideas?
dem
